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WhatsApp gets a failing grade on EFF privacy scorecard
Privacy is a growing concern in the digital age, and few companies find themselves being criticised for how they handle user privacy more than Facebook Inc. Apparently some of those problems also extend to the social network’s other properties, including its popular messaging service WhatsApp.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) recent “Who has your back?” privacy scorecard report, WhatsApp failed on almost every account. The report said that WhatsApp “earned credit for its parent company Facebook’s public policy position opposing backdoors and nothing else.”
This is WhatsApp’s first year in the report, and although EFF gave the company a full year to prepare for its inclusion in the report, it has adopted none of the best practices we’ve identified as part of this report. We appreciate the steps that WhatsApp’s parent company Facebook has taken to stand by its users, but there is room for WhatsApp to improve. WhatsApp should publicly require a warrant before turning over user content, publish a law enforcement guide and transparency report, have a stronger policy of informing users of government requests, and disclose its data retention policies. WhatsApp does get credit for Facebook’s public position opposing back doors, and we commend Facebook for that.
The report points to Facebook’s signature on a coalition letter organized by the Open Technology Institute as evidence of the company’s stance against backdoors. The letter urged other companies to “reject any proposal that U.S. companies deliberately weaken the security of our products.”
WhatsApp was not the only company to receive such low marks. AT&T Inc also received only one star, but the EFF praised the company for showing signs of improvement.
“This is AT&T’s fifth year in the report,” the EFF said, “and it has adopted all of the best practice we recognized in prior years’ reports. We applaud those commitments and urge the company to integrate the new 2015 standards.”
While a several companies received low or moderate scores on the report, a few received all five stars, including Adobe Systems Inc, Apple Inc, Credo Mobile, Dropbox Inc, Sonic.net Inc, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, WordPress.com, and Yahoo Inc.
Photo by Jan Persiel
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